Fight terrorism by fighting regimes sponsoring it
Article from Canadian Jewish News, September 19, 2002
By SHELDON KIRSHNER
Staff ReporterTORONTO - Benjamin Netanyahu capped a tumultuous speaking tour of four Canadian cities last week by calling for the overthrow of Arab regimes that sponsor terrorism.
"The way to fight terrorism is to fight the regimes sponsoring it," the former Israeli prime minister said in a speech at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, given under the auspices of State of Israel Bonds.
Netanyahu, whose Likud government lasted from 1996 until 1999, said the Palestinian Authority (PA), led by Yasser Arafat, is a terrorist entity that must be eradicated.
Describing the PA as "Arafatstan," Netanyahu declared that Arafat, his former negotiating partner under the Olso accords, would have "to go down."
Introduced as "prime minister," Netanyahu lumped the PA with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was ousted last year, and with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, which the United States reportedly seeks to dismantle.
Claiming that the root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism, Netanyahu said that terrorism can only be challenged if the dictatorships that nurture it are replaced with democratic governments.
"We're in a great battle," he told an audience running into the hundreds. "Terrorism has to be fought and vanquished."
Netanyahu, who was Israel's ninth and youngest prime minister, arrived in Toronto after stops in Winnipeg, Montreal and Ottawa.
He was scheduled to speak to the U.S. Congress about terrorism on Sept. 12, a day after the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
His engagements in Canada were arranged by Israel Bonds, the Asper Foundation and Hebrew University.
Netanyahu's tour was dogged by anti-Israel demonstrations.
Violent pro-Palestinian protesters in Montreal prevented Netanyahu from delivering a speech at Concordia University.
In Ottawa, where he met with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, demonstrators milled around the downtown hotel where he spoke.
At the Toronto Centre for the Arts, some 200 Palestinians and their sympathizers, waving Palestinian flags and shouting slogans, confronted an almost equally large phalanx of Israel supporters holding aloft Israeli flags and placards.
Armed police officers kept the antagonistic groups apart, and there was no violence.
In a biting reference to the pro-Palestinian protesters, Netanyahu said that Israel provokes Palestinians by its mere existence.
"What you saw in Montreal is a microcosm of the hatred we're fighting," he said, apparently referring to the current Palestinian uprising.
Netanyahu, the author of a book on terrorism, branded terrorism " a criminal means of warfare" that must always be rejected and punished.
Defining terrorism as the systematic attack against civilians, he charged Palestinians with deliberately targeting Israelis.
"Terrorists trample all human rights into the dust," he declared.
Benjamin NetanyahuCharacterizing the events of Sept. 11 as "a wakeup call from hell," Netanyahu launched into a blistering critique of Arafat.
Having earlier accused him of naming public squares after known terrorists, Netanyahu claimed that Arafat does not seek peace, but Israel's destruction.
He ascribed Israel's presence in the West Bank, and the formation of the Palestinian refugee problem, to "Arab aggression."
Presenting a short history of Zionist settlement in Palestine, Netanyahu urged the world to understand "basic historical truths" about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Jews did not steal Palestinian lands, he said emphatically.
"We never gave up our claim to the land as a free and independent people."
Growing still more emotional, he added, "We're not in a strange land. We're in our land."
Netanyahu said that an Arab propaganda campaign has succeeded in clouding the issue of land ownership.
Asserting that Israel and Diaspora Jews must work hand in hand to defeat the false perception that the foundations of Israel were laid on Palestinian territory, Netanyahu said, "This is the most important battle we face."
Ramming home his point, he observed: "The most important battle we're fighting is the battle for the truth."
After describing a meeting he once had with the late Lubavitch Rebbe in New York City, Netanyahu said he has devoted himself to lighting the candles of truth so as to dispel the slanders and vilification hurled against Israel.
In closing, he urged members of the audience to become "soldiers of truth."
Several speakers preceded Netanyahu, notably Meir Romem, Israel's consul general in Toronto, and Israel Asper, the Winnipeg-based proprietor of the Canwest Global media empire, which includes Global Television and the National Post.
Romem said Israel is at war and that the objective of the Palestinians is to destroy the Jewish state.
Saying that Israel's spirit has not been broken by the latest intifadah, Romem stated that Israel will stand firm and win.
He asked Jews to show solidarity with Israel by visiting the country, by investing in it and by buying its products.
Asper said that anti-Semitism rises when Israel is attacked and defends itself.
Criticism of Israel veers into sheer anti-Semitism, he continued, when it denigrates Zionism in contemptuous terms.
He called on Jews to respond vigorously to anti-Israel bashing before it assumes crisis proportions.
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